If you listen to Georgia's and Russia's leaders long enough, you may really start to feel that you should double-check the size of Georgia on a world map. At a two-hour-long banter with reporters on May 18, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev claimed that the 2008 war with Georgia had been about, yes, defending Russia's independence.
“[W]e have managed to protect ourselves, our independence, our sovereign ways,” Medvedev told journalists. “Here, I mean the most challenging events, including the 2008 events,” said Medvedev, who once described the confrontation with Georgia as Russia’s 9/11.
Blowing things out of proportion may be de rigueur in political rhetoric, but implying that Russia’s sovereignty was at stake in the five-day war, which did not even spill onto Russian soil, is a bit much.
Sure, Georgia is home to many larger-than-life characters with grand plans and the 2008 war resonated around the world, but, to hear Medvedev tell it, it sounds as if Russia survived (just barely) a sequel of the 1812 Napoleonic invasion, with Georgian troops on the verge of taking Moscow.
Nonetheless, there appears to be a political moral to this Russian version of "The Little Dutch Boy." As in any good fairy tale, those who heroically sacrifice themselves deserve a reward. In the 2012 presidential elections, the underlying message appears to be, Russians should really vote for one of the two guardians of the nation’s sovereignty -- either Dima (Medvedev) or Vova (Prime Minister Vladimir Putin).
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
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